Recommendations of students

Ave Maria by Gounod

Fernando Fernández-Martos Herrero

2º E.S.O.

Charles Francois Gounod was a french musician of the nineteenth century who composed his “Ave María” based on “The Prelude” from Johann Sebastian Bach.

Gounod composed religious music and opera, and his most famous musical composition was the opera “Fausto” and his most popular religious play was the “Ave María”.

Gounod was a very religious person, even began religious studies but ultimately decided to dedicate in music.

I selected this play to be a very beautiful classical composition dedicated to the Virgin, with helps you feel closer to God by listening its calm melody.

I like it very much because begins with “piano” notes and as it progresses, it raises some musical notes “forte”, combining again with other “piano” and more soft moments.

The second part, from “Sancta María…” begins a scale ever higher notes reaching its “forte” saying “nunc et in hora mortis nostri…” moment, an then, return to tone “piano” the “amen” at the end, long, sweet and peaceful.

________________________________________

Asturias by Albéniz
Tomás Fernández Infante

Albeniz's prelude, Asturias-Leyenda, is perhaps the quintessential "Spanish guitar" piece. The piece has become so widely identified with the guitar that those who do not know otherwise would probably be astonished to discover that the work was originally written for the piano. Isaac Albeniz wrote the piece during the early 1890's, most likely in London. Albéniz's Leyenda, a most evocative piece of music, has inspired numerous dramatic stories. However, Albéniz's nostalgia for his homeland was expressed in much more romantic, and much more inventive. Imagining himself of Moorish ancestry, most of Albéniz's own comments concerning the programmatic aspect of his music derive from images of the Alhambra - the elaborate Moorish palace. Of this place, Albéniz imagined evening serenades, accompanied on the one hand by the strumming of guitars and on the other by the "lazy dragging of the fingers across the strings" of the guzla, an ancient Arabic instrument

What was the inspiration behind Albéniz's preludio, Asturias? Living outside Spain (most of his pieces in "Spanish" style were written in London and Paris), Albéniz felt a nostalgia for his homeland which evoked images of flamenco, even though Albéniz was a Catalan, he identified his "Spanishness" with Andalucia.

All of these elements are to be found in our piece. The opening section of the work could hardly be more evocative of the flamenco guitar, with its "open-string" pedal point and "rasgueado" chords.The slow central section is more sophisticated. The opening phrases evoke the cante jondo. Albéniz does not view this as a conquest, however, and following a tentative reference to the main flamenco theme of the piece there appears a harmonically remarkable passage: an impressionistic blur of superimposed tonic and phyrigian augmented-sixth harmonies. The work ends on bare octaves.